


Pledge of Duty

by locketofyourhair



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: Accidental kink, F/M, Riding, Voyeurism, being royal kind of sucks, ye olde wedding traditions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-27
Updated: 2014-07-27
Packaged: 2018-02-10 14:25:10
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,884
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2028396
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/locketofyourhair/pseuds/locketofyourhair
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Alistair wasn't raised to be noble or to worry about the end of royal weddings.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Pledge of Duty

**Author's Note:**

> This fic was borne out of a million discussions on royal couples having to have sex in front of witnesses with meirelle and riversburns, though the fact that it's sex and not a pure humor fic says that I talked to riversburns more, who also was a lovely beta and helped with the sex.

There are moments where Alistair misses the war. When he is listening to the Landsmeet argue amongst themselves over who should be named to Arl of Denerim, he longs for the simplicity of fighting through swathes of darkspawn, Elissa at his side, with magic crackling through the air. Darkspawn were easy opponents. They only wanted to destroy.

In a way, the nobles are very much the same, but they don’t do it in nearly as plain a fashion.

“My lords,” he says, when he notices that Eamon and Elissa both have excused themselves from this petty fight. “While this is a pressing matter, we have a city yet to rebuild. There is no sense in appointing an arl with Denerim in such a shambles.”

“But when will we find the time to fight about Loghain's lands, your majesty, if we cannot settle the dispute of one city?” Fergus calls out. 

“It is rightfully the land of the Dowager Queen,” someone else shouts back, and this is why Alistair misses Elissa at such meetings. She might not know all the nobles, but her background makes it more likely that she will know them.

And she has a way of making sure Zevran knows about them as well. Alistair doesn’t relish that they have a spymaster, less so that it is Zevran of all people, but he performs the job admirably. Alistair can’t really complain until there is a rash of accidents, he supposes.

He has no doubt that there will be just that. Accidents.

“I am calling this session of the Landsmeet to a close,” he says then. “For it appears we are getting nowhere, and the people of Denerim seem more concerned with the fact that we lost most of our bridges than we don’t have a lord or lady sitting in the pretty house.”

He can tell from the way both Teagan and Fergus wince that he said something wrong. This is why he didn’t want to be king and why he hates being king when Eamon and Elissa aren’t hear to try to keep him from shoving both feet in his mouth. 

There really is no rule that Alistair can’t be the first to leave a Landsmeet, so he just turns heel and walks out. He ignores the way Zevran seems to appear at his side, because then he might think Elissa’s spymaster was doubling as a bodyguard. Alistair isn’t resentful. He isn’t Cailan. He was trained as a templar before he became a Warden, and he helped stop the damned Blight.

“Our lady is in the library with Eamon,” Zevran says as a way of greeting.

Alistair isn’t resentful that Zevran calls her “their” lady. He does it to be annoying, and because she is no longer a Grey Warden, at least until the First has decided about their... luck at escaping the Blight. He didn’t even know Wardens could be suspended from duty, officially, but the more you think you know...

He also knows it won’t last. There are darkspawn yet who haven’t gone to ground, and he can’t very well fight them now that he’s chained to a throne. Elissa is Hero of Ferelden. The Wardens will have some mission for her soon. 

“What disaster has Eamon found now?” Alistair is almost afraid to ask. It must have been grave and messy for them both to excuse themselves from the nobles without telling him.

“Oh, still wedding plans. If I did not think Cousland would be distressed at your anger, I would take care of Eamon for her, but such is life.” 

Zevran is creepy, when you get down to it. He’s a terrible flirt and asks far too many personal questions, but at the end of the day, his cheerful discussions of assassinations are what truly make Alistair’s skin crawl. 

“Blasted wedding,” Alistair says, because he doesn’t care anymore. He truly doesn’t think Elissa cares about it, except as a power play to unite Ferelden. Eamon cares for it in much the same way, but he and Elissa seem to argue over every step.

Yesterday the argument was about if they should wed inside or outside of the Chantry. Elissa argued for outside, so the people might see. Eamon argued inside because of the great traditions. 

“What is it now? Napkins?” 

Zevran’s eyes spark in a way that makes Alistair’s stomach lurch. “No, witnesses. They argue about this most of all. It is a trivial matter, truly, so long as some nobles are there, but Eamon wants the traditional assortment. Elissa wants fewer because she does not feel it necessary.”

The castle is still half in shambles. The library doubles as Alistair’s council chamber because, well, that wing of the castle doesn’t exactly exist anymore. They’re rebuilding, but it’s a minor thing. There’s more than enough room for the household without it.

But the library’s door was smashed in the war, and there is a collapsed wall. It means he can hear the argument long before he sees it. 

“I do not think the Teyrn of Highever needs to be there, Eamon,” Elissa says, in her coldest voice, the one she used when she faced down Howe and bargained with Behlen. “Five will be enough, with you and Teagan in their ranks. Two more of their side, and Waking Sea. I will not have this all be men.”

“It has always been ten, my lady, and Waking Sea is a small Bann.” Eamon’s voice is soothing. “And I fear that if we include more of Anora’s supporters than Alistair’s, they will think on the honor.”

“An honor?” Elissa laughs, and Alistair is actually scared by how empty her voice is. He has heard that voice before, and it never proceeded a good decision. That she would laugh at their strongest ally like that is disturbing. He maybe begins walking faster. He isn’t running, not yet, but it will be a close thing. 

“It is our tradition. You are the daughter of a Teyrn. You know what is expected of nobility at your rank and station.”

“Nobility is borne not of riches but obligation.” Alistair comes into the library to see Elissa sneering at Eamon. “I know, Eamon. I am not arguing against this obligation. I just think on this point we could be more...considerate.”

Her eyes flash on Alistair then, and he likes that her lips quirk into a smile despite all her cold fury. He likes that he can still bring that reaction out of her, no matter what battles they faced.

Some days he muses on what it might have been like, if their situations had been different and there had been no Blight. If he had never been sent to the Chantry and had there never been a massacre at Highever. He likes to think the Maker would have pushed them together, but more likely, they never would have had a chance. The Cousland name was simply too powerful. Cailan wouldn’t have been able to overlook his biggest political liability marrying into that family.

He shakes off the ghosts then and moves to Elissa’s side, and she slides her hand into his. That is a new, thrilling thing still, that they can be so open with their affection, and that they can just relish the small touches.

She’s wearing an honest to Maker dress, too, a fine green fabric inlaid with silver threads, the stomacher a deeper green than the dress. It makes her red hair seem darker, richer. She wears it up now, and there is a ribbon tied through it the same color as her dress. She is beautiful. He will not stare at his betrothed openly, even in front of Eamon, but after nearly a year of her wearing old tunics and threadbare shirts when out of her armor, it is nearly an obsession of his. 

Eamon frowns. “Please think on what I’ve said, my lady,” he says. 

Elissa dips into a small courtesy, not as deep as one should probably go for an arl, but it is something. “If you will consider my objections, Eamon.” Her voice is still cold and hollow, and Alistair can almost feel the stare she gives Eamon as he leaves them.

Zevran takes his dutiful place by the door, lounging and looking bored again. 

“Maker, look at you. Did you have this made?” Alistair slides his hands on her waist, tracing her body down to the curve of her hips. 

Elissa shakes her head. “Just taken in. Fergus found some old clothing in Highever, and I have had a few girls making adjustments.” She fusses with the sleeves for a moment, then looks at him from beneath her eyelashes. “As I have lost the fight about our post-coronation wardrobes, it seemed silly to have new finery commissioned when they’ll be tossing it all out in five or six months.”

Alistair flicks his eyes over to Zevran as he plays with the laces on the side of the dress. “Do you think Zevran could keep everyone from my rooms for a time?”

Elissa laughs. “Well, so long as we aren’t left alone. The Revered Mother is scandalized by the rumors that we have taken to bed without marrying.” Her fingers begin working at the ties to his plate armor. “You should learn to dress as a lord, you know. Not everything requires armor.”

He kisses her, turning her so he can press her against the bookshelves. She seems smaller in her fine clothes, fragile. It thrills him a bit and scares him. He had thought when the fighting was over, things would settle down, but she seems not to be thriving in the castle. 

“Alistair, we must try for an ounce of decorum,” she murmurs against his lips even as she undoes another tie. “It is most improper for a queen to be anything other than a maid before her wedding day.”

He snorts. “Elissa, love. I think that ship might have sailed.”

She pulls away. “There is much to do before the wedding, and there is magic yet in the world. I was merely suggesting that we shouldn’t be quite so obvious.” She sighs and rests her hands against his chest. 

“Yes, the wedding,” he says, and it stings a bit to see how tired talking of the wedding makes her. The marriage was her idea, and he thinks sometimes that they would be better served if they just called it off. 

He doesn’t want to, of course. He wants Elissa by his side, damn the realities of their tainted blood, but he knows she would be better suited to leading an army as his general than she ever could be as a dutiful queen. 

“I will be relieved when it is over,” she says softly. Her eyes are sad. “I think how my mother would have done the arguing with Eamon. Perhaps she would win some arguments, more than I can at any rate.”

Alistair bites at his lip, and then he steels himself. “You’re arguing about who will be at the ceremony now?” He knows he will take her side, if only to see her happy, but he really doesn’t want to anger Eamon. 

He is reminded again why he never wanted to be king.

Elissa snorts. “Oh, that is not the argument, my king. I don’t care who sees us _marry_. I want the kingdom to see if it will make your power more secure. I’ll have Celene brought here on the back of a bronto with an escort of Crows. For that, I would do anything.”

Zevran laughs from the doorway. “I would give much to see this, my lady,” he says. He doesn’t turn to look at them.

Alistair frowns. “Then why do we need witnesses?” 

Elissa gets that look on her face that he is coming to dread. The look that came with needing someone they trusted in his rooms when they were alone. It never comes with anything that he’s going to like, and now she looks to Zevran. 

“What am I missing?”

She pulls away and pats his breastplate. “Upstairs, I think. We’d best discuss this behind closed doors. Zevran, might you send for Wynne?”

Oh, he really isn’t going to like this. 

* * *

His bedroom isn’t the king’s chamber. That had been lost in the battle, and Alistair is glad for it. He didn’t want to inherit the bed of a father he never met and a brother he barely knew. It’s a fine room, much better than the one he shared as a child in the chantry and even better than the room he had at Redcliffe before that. It technically belongs to the Couslands, but Fergus is in and out so often trying to rebuild Highever Castle. He doesn’t seem to mind that he’s been moved to another set of rooms, and Elissa is in them often enough that she hasn’t raised a fuss.

She sits at his desk, hands clasped together. Zevran found Wynne in record time, and she is pointedly not looking to either of them as they all get nice and comfy. Wynne looks better for her time off the road. She is still pale, still serene in a slightly off way, but there is more color in her cheeks, so they aren’t as translucent. 

It will be a blow when she finally makes good on her plans to leave with Shale. Alistair tries not to think about it.

“It’s not every day that a mage is called before the King of Ferelden,” she says with a warm smile. “And his queen to be. How may I help you, children?”

Elissa glances at Alistair and then turns to Wynne. Her hands are still in her lap, but he can see the way her arms are bent. She is forcing them still. “Alistair and I need to discuss... delicate matters, and I thought it would be prudent for him to understand an aspect of what is going to happen after the wedding.”

She and Wynne exchange glances, and it is just like being back at camp. Alistair and Elissa were both Wardens; they shared everything, but Elissa was more. She was the general of their amassing army. There were always things she didn’t tell him, no matter what they were to each other. 

Alistair doesn’t want that to continue, not with Wynne, and not when it actually concerns him. “I’m not a child that you two can protect. I am king.”

Wynne smiles, and she, at least, has the grace to look embarrassed. “Elissa has asked me for help with a rather delicate issue. With any royal wedding, there are expectations that must be upheld. One of which is that the queen is untouched. It’s believed by some that a queen who isn’t a virgin will be barren.”

Alistair rolls his eyes. “That isn’t true, and it doesn’t matter.” He and Elissa can’t have children. That much he knows, and he doesn’t care. They have thirty years, probably less. He won’t waste them worrying about an heir. 

“No, but they’ll use it against us eventually,” Elissa says. She looks at him, and her eyes are cold again. “Cailan was going to put Anora aside. He loved Anora, he worshipped her, yet he was going to put her away because she couldn’t give him a child. We already know what our chances are, and people will be watching, you know. In five years, it will be you being counselled to put me aside because I am barren.”

He scowls. “They’ll be wasting their breath.”

Elissa smiles in a way that makes him distinctly uncomfortable. “I know, Alistair. But that’s not what we’re talking about. Wynne is going to help make sure that the nobles believe I’m a maid when we’re first married.”

Alistair stares at her. “And how... would the nobles know that? Is there going to be some sort of test? They’re not going to--”

Elissa waves her hand. “Nothing so invasive as that,” she says, and her smile is tight. “But they will check our sheets after they’ve witnessed everything.”

He frowns, because in context, witnesses sounds much more disturbing than a half dozen of Loghain’s cronies watching them marry from the front of the Chantry. “What kind of witnessing?” he asks.

Elissa draws herself up and won’t look at him. “When a noble couple, particularly those who are to inherit a great arling or to become a teyrn, marries, their first sex is always witnessed, to be sure that they are sexually compatible and capable of producing children. It’s very normal. Fergus and Oriana were witnessed, for example.”

Alistair feels like he’s been slapped. “They’re going to watch--they want to see _that?_ ”

Wynne holds up a hand. “Alistair, it’s not that anyone wants to see. It is tradition. I’ve heard members of the Chantry talk about it before.”

“It’s depraved. That’s private!” He looks between the two of them, and he is very, very glad that Zevran is on the other side of the door. “This is what you and Eamon have been fighting over? Eamon knows about this and _approves_ of it?” He cannot remember to keep his voice down.

Elissa gets up then and comes over to him, taking his hands in hers. “Alistair, it’s not a matter of approval. It’s a matter of that is how he was raised, to expect this.” She bites her lip, looking away. “It’s how I was raised.”

He stops short and curses under his breath. “But some of those people hate us both. I don’t want them to know what it--I don’t want them to see us together.”

“When Fergus married Oriana, I was a child,” Elissa says softly. “I remember being so perplexed that Father and Mother chased me out of the party. Mother followed after me, of course, as did so many of the guests, but they had this room set up. There was a lovely bed, with ribbons. I remember thinking it looked like a candy float, something out of stories, and I wanted to be there for that part of the party. It didn’t seem fair that Father’s friends were going to stay to be sure that Fergus and Oriana could sleep.”

She rolls her shoulders in and then wrinkles her nose. “It really is too bad that they hadn’t learned I could pick locks yet. I was a handful even then.” 

Alistair just stares at her. “You saw them...Your own brother?”

Elissa winces, and he sees a flash of the girl she was once, before the slaughter in Highever. “It was highly traumatic, even more so because Father was watching. I never told anyone, not even Ser Gilmore--stupid sod would have told Mother--but Oriana knew. I think she knew. She was Antivan, and you know how they are.” Elissa gets up from the desk chair and sits beside him on the bed. 

Alistair winces, remembering Zevran’s oh-so-helpful advice about herbs. “I can imagine.”

“I suppose it would be turnabout if Fergus _had_ to be there, but I don’t care. I’m not giving Eamon that.” She lifted her chin proudly. “Even if he can badger me into ten.”

His stomach drops. He had forgotten that part. “Ten people are not watching us make love.”

Elissa begins to undo his gauntlets. She won’t look at him. “It won’t be making love, Alistair. It will be fucking, plain as that.” Now there is a hint of bitterness in her voice. 

He pulls his arm from the gauntlet, and she moves around him to undo the other. “What exactly is going to happen?”

She’s quiet for a long time, working on his armor. He’s vaguely aware of Wynne drifting over to the corner of the room, and he feels the hum of some kind of magic. Elissa undoes his breastplate, and he pulls that off while she works on his boots. He stops her hands when she goes for his leg guards. 

“Elissa. What exactly is going to happen,” he repeats. 

“We’re going to be married,” she says, voice soft and far away. “They’ll have their lavish ceremony inside the chantry for the nobility, and for our allies and honored guests. Then we are going to be stuffed on some sort of cart and paraded around Denerim for the city to see us.” His armor is undone now, and she removes it easily. 

He doesn’t like the soft tunic and breeches that he wears under his armor. The castle is always cold, and they are not as warm as rough woolen clothes he wore all during their quest to stop the Blight. “We should stoke the fire,” he says, and then he catches her hands. “And you are avoiding the question.”

She pulls herself up onto the bed, closing her eyes. “They’ll have a bed set up in the palace. They probably won’t use this one, but they may. They put gossamer around the bed, veiling it just enough that they can pretend it’s for the modesty of the couple. The sheets will probably be too fine for day to day use, and it would not surprise me if they are the same ones Marric bedded his wife on.”

Alistair winces. That is just perverse. He’s not going to think about it. At all. If he can avoid it. (Which, he won’t be able to, but he rather likes to pretend that he can.)

He focuses on what’s important instead. “But you can see everything?”

Elissa nods. “It’s an illusion, though I suppose it helps the couple pretend they’re alone.” She turns and looks at him. “You’ll be in the bed like this, in your breeches.”

“No tunic though?”

“No.” She pulls on his then. “You like sitting in sweaty silks?” 

Alistair hesitates and then sits up enough to take the tunic off, and he loves the wicked gleam in her eye, the way his skin runs cold and hot when she seems him like this. “Is this an elaborate ruse to get me out of my clothes?”

“Is it working?” Elissa kisses him, sweeping her dress around as she moves on top of him.

Alistair turns his head to the corner of the room. Wynne is still here. He’s almost positive.

Elissa puts her hands down on the bed, bracketing his face. “Look at me, Alistair,” she says calmly. “We’re not done talking about how this will happen.”

Her dress flares over him, the heavy fabric against his chest. Her legs are bare underneath, her knees pressing lightly against the waist of his breeches. “I think you may wish to move, if we’re to keep talking.”

She sits up, then, grasping his hand and guiding it under her skirts. "Talking is only a part of what I have planned," she says.

"Oh," Alistair breathes, clutching at her soft, strong thighs without meaning to and feeling his face heat. "But surely--I don't know that I can, not with..." He trails off and glances over to Wynne's corner again. This time, Elissa lets him, and Wynne's studious attempt not to look at them makes him feel all the more mortified.

"I can send her to fetch Zevran instead, if you like," Elissa says, a sly note in her voice.

"No!" he says quickly, shaking his head for emphasis. Zevran is the last person Alistair would want in his chambers right now, not least because he suspects Zevran would enjoy it far, far too much.

Elissa’s eyelashes flutter a moment, when he pushes his fingers past her small clothes and into her. She is wet already, hot. He forces himself to not look at Wynne, to not be aware that they’re being watched. Elissa’s eyes are very green up close, and he finds himself missing the dark green warpaint she wore when she was still masquerading as Cliodhna, the serving maid who escaped the Highever massacre. 

He misses how freely she spoke then, before Alistair had to tell her who he was really, besides a templar and a Warden. 

She grins, shifting her hips. “It won’t be like this when the nobles are watching. They don’t care so much for our pleasure. They’ll want you to mount me like a brood mare and do your business.” She rolls her hips again, leaning close. Her breasts rise and fall as she breathes, and he can’t help the smallest of groans.

“But that isn’t what you like, is it?” she whispers, and her breath is hot on his jaw as she leans closer. “Tell me how you wanted our first time as King and Queen to be like.” 

“I wanted you to leave your dress on,” he says, voice soft enough that Wynne can’t hear. He moves another finger inside of her, feeling the way she shivers on top of him and around him. “But to take all the...under skirts and your smallclothes off.”

"You like me like this," she says, her voice low. She sits up and runs her hands over the boning in her corset, the gathering of the skirts at her waist. 

He reaches up with one hand, not quite touching, but he wants to. Her drake scale armor showed more of her chest than the dress does now, but the swell of her breasts is more distracting. Her skin is very pale against the dark green. Neither of them were terribly clean while they travelled, and she glows now from scrubbing and good soap, not the gritty bars of dark lye that they traded darkspawn weapons for. 

Elissa grins and grinds down on his hands. "You want to flip my skirts up and take me?" She asks, and her voice is still so soft. "Because that could be arranged."

Alistair's body shivers and he can't stop it. “That would be something,” he says, and he rubs a hand along her jaw, leaning up to kiss her. “But I--When I was in training, one of the other lads had a book. It was the sort that naughty lads in the Chantry shouldn’t have.”

“Oh?” Elissa begins to kiss along his jaw, his neck, and it could drive a man to distraction.

“There were...passages, about things,” he says, voice strained. “About a naughty mage holding a templar down with magic and having him.”

Elissa pulls back. She is studying him like he’s a particularly complex trap. “A pretended rape, then?” 

“Maker, no,” he says, because he could never--that isn’t something he thinks he could find attractive, not ever. “He enjoyed it, loved it even, but she was--she was on top of him.” 

“Oooh,” Elissa says, and she smirks. Someday he will have to ask where this knowledge came from, that a teyrn’s daughter knows so much of sex games. “Like we are now.” She grinds back down against his hand to drive her point home. 

“But you have no magic to hold me,” he says, and his face is hot. Her dress is still flared around him, and Maker, he cannot believe they are doing this. It was a fantasy he filed away, something he thought he would never have a wife to try it with. He was going to die chaste with only his fantasies. 

Elissa, though, has no interest in anyone staying chaste. “Then I will have to hold your arms and trust that you will keep them where I put them,” she says simply, and she reaches under her dress. She undoes the ties to her smalls before she takes his hand away from her.

She stretches his arms over his head, pressing them to the mattress as she kisses him again. “This is how you wanted our wedding night, then,” she says. “Do not move your arms.”

“I won’t,” he says, and his face is burning. Void take it, all of him is burning as Elissa sits up on her knees and pulls down his breeches and his smalls without hesitating. “Can you--Let your hair down, Elissa,” he whispers.

She’s worn it up since before the battle of Denerim. He misses how she looked in the early days, when she wore it in a simple braid down her back and he would see her comb it in the evening. It glowed in firelight, and he would not admit to himself that he wanted her. She was their leader, and they were all they had left. It was them and Morgan against the entirety of the Blight. He couldn’t risk upsetting that because she was a pretty girl who smiled at him. 

Now though, she is a pretty girl who laughs pulls the ribbon from her hair, then the pins, so it cascades down just past her shoulders. “Is that better?” she asks, and she moves again, her hand back under her dress so she can take him in hand. 

He groans softly, her hands still calloused from the war. “Maker, yes.”

“Remember, hands up there,” she says, and then she is guiding him inside her, and it never seems to get old, the feel of her body around her. She is always hot, slick for him, and when her hands come back to close over his wrists, he swears. 

Suddenly this is a bad idea because he wants to kiss her and run his fingers through her loose hair. He wants to touch her, as she begins to move above him in all her finery. The image is almost too much, and he cannot bear to look at her for too long because he will not last, not with her thumbs pressing into the underside of his wrists and her hips moving in small circles, just enough to drive him mad. 

“When they witness us,” Elissa says, and her face may seem calm, but her voice betrays her. The way her skin begins to flush shows that she can act cool and calm, but his body moving in hers has its effects. “You’ll think of this. I’ll wear my dress for you the next night, and every night after if this is what you want.”

“Elissa, please,” he groans, and he doesn’t want to think about duty now, not when she rides him and her breathing is already fast. He can feel himself twitching, and the muscles in his belly tighten. He cannot hold back from his orgasm. “I can’t--”

“If you want this, I will give this to you.” Her fingers feel like they will leave marks in the morning. It hurts, and he won’t ask her to stop. “I love you, and I want you to have something to look forward to at our wedding.” 

Her voice breaks at the last word, and she throws her head back, grinding hard against him and when she lets go of one wrist so she may push her skirts aside and touch herself, he does not move. He lets his arm stay where she has placed it, and when he feels her tremble above him, her head tipped back so he can only see the long line of her throat and a lock of hair stuck to the sweat there, he cannot help it. 

Alistair releases, and he does not think there is a guard on duty who cannot hear him. In that moment, he does not care.

Elissa slumps off him, her dress wrapped around her legs and her chest heaving. “You realize I will have to have Zevran put my hair back up, of course,” she says, and she tries to look cross but her breathlessness belies that.

Alistair gathers her close and kisses her soundly. “I love you, too.”

She smiles and rests her head against his chest. He may doze then, he cannot be sure, but it seems like no time passes. Elissa does not move. Only the light seems to fade, and the fire comes back to life somehow or another. He doesn’t care. 

Elissa doesn’t move until someone comes by to remind them that it will be dinner soon. There are several arls here and a few banns, and they will be expected.

“It never ends,” he says. He does not want to dress for dinner. He wants to hold Elissa and be married already, and sod the bloody crown.

“Someday we will be used to it,” Elissa says, and she sits up and tries to set her skirts right. Even he can see that it’s a hopeless endeavor. “I suppose I shall need to change.”

“Will you wear your hair down for dinner?” he asks, reaching for her hand. She lets him take it.

“Of course,” she says, and already he can see her pulling up the coldness that had served her so well in the Blight.

Alistair presses a kiss to her hand, the inside of her wrist. “Do you regret putting me on the throne?”

“Maker, no,” Elissa says, and she doesn’t so much as hesitate. She runs a hair through his hair, and he hates that she seems to distant already, almost sad. “Do you regret letting me put you there?”

“Only if you regret being my queen,” he whispers it, surprised how much the words hurt. He doesn’t care that she expects the indignities of being forced to--of being watched on what should be the happiest night of their lives. He doesn’t care that she and Eamon don’t seem to get along now that they don’t have a Blight to draw their common ire. 

His heart drops when she doesn’t answer right away. “I regret the necessity of it. I wish--I want you to be happy and I want you to be secure on the throne, and some days I cannot help but think I cannot give you both things. I thought if they feared your queen, or at least saw that she was too vicious a fighter to go down easily...” 

Elissa sighs and kisses him. She is shaking. “Promise me that in ten years' time, you will be happy and you won’t care that they whisper about us, and I will be over the moon.”

“If you’re my wife, I’ll be happy.” He’d be happy to be dirt-poor on a farm if she was his wife, though he thinks he would have to do the cooking. Elissa was allowed to hunt for their dinners at camp, but she was never allowed to cook them. Food was too scarce to be ruined. 

She presses their foreheads together. “I wish you wouldn’t unman me before I have to go face them.” He can hear the smile in her words. “But at least when we are married, no one will think twice of you ravishing your bride before dinner.”

He grins up at her, and she grins back crookedly. “At least once we’re married, I can be alone with you and make you scream,” he says. “I want them to know the Queen is a happy woman, as they probably know now that I’m a very happy man.”

Elissa laughs and she kisses him, and for the moment, the matter is settled. Damn the throne; damn the pressing needs of their stations and tradition. They will be happy; they will be aggressively happy. Those who do not like it will just have to ignore that.

They faced a Blight together. A public marriage will be nothing.


End file.
